lol i could tell from your comment that you hadn't seen it. you missed the mark big time.

I very well may have, but I based my opinions on several well articulated reviews/analyses about it from reliable sources. To be sure, a lot of people thought it was good, but I understand that graphic sex scenes played a significant part of the movie and in all irony that is a turn off for me and movies..

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this is why i refrain from commenting on the horror film posts-- i don't like watching them much hence i don't know them.

True dat, and I totally respect that. Indeed, that is why I said my critique was on the premise of the film itself and not any particulars about it because I hadn't and wouldn't see it.

yeah it's "heavy" and it delves into all sorts of stuff-- theology, fishing, mathematics, you name it. it's really pretty great but also pretty grim. not a feel-good movie. but an intelligent one. in spite of the surface brutality etc i think in the end it's pretty compassionate towards its main character. but i could't say. this is why i love european movies over americans-- it's never the goodies vs. the baddies and there is ample ambiguity and room for interpretation.

finished watching lars von trier's nymphomaniac (or "nymph()maniac" to make it more pretentious). what seems like the 4-hour version (vol 1. last week and vol 2 last night)

when i saw vol 1 it felt like a good and important movie, i loved the story and the digressions. vol 2 however felt a lot less fresh and propelled more by logical inertia than inspiration. i probably fucked up by watching them separately instead of together. the element of surprise was gone. unfortunately i cannot go back in time.

it's not really a horny movie at all. it's a fucking sad and depressing and weird movie-- at least the 4 hour version which doesn't have all the porno fucking.

it's still a good movie though-- charlotte gainsbourg as this twisted but very lucid creature and stellan skaarsgard as his nerd story sidekick make a solid pair. the girl who plays young joe does a good job acting. shia labeouf is adequate. uma will surprise you. the other guy from the 90s who plays the dad does great too.

the camera is, as usual with him, great & gorgeous-- and it even quotes other lars von trier movies from medea to kingdom hospital to antichrist and i'm sure i've missed others. if you watch it, do it all in one session or pretty close (e.g. 2 days) or some of the magic will be gone from it.

also try to watch the 5 hour version if you can-- not for the porno which i'm sure will only add to the sadness, but because in the 4 hour one it feels like the movie has some plot holes and disconnects. regrets...

I'm intrigued by Necromaniac. Never watched much Von Trier stuff or really got too into his schtick. I also prefer my movies to be a neat 90 minutes - 2 hrs at most. Still, I'm intrigued by Necromaniac. Must be the porn.

Shia LeBouef's character's secretary, the one who interviews the young Charlotte Gainsbourg's character for her first job.

yeah, "Good job, Liz!". i called her the print shop receptionist--hard to tell who was doing what in that office.

i didn't understand your question because it didn't seem to me a remarkable character in any way. perhaps i didn't notice something. the actress who played her did a great job reacting/relating to joe (great body language) but i don't have any thoughts about the character herself. what version have you seen?

i'm really curious about the longer version. for example, the posters show udo kier getting off with his eyes rolling behind his eyelids (great look for him ha ha) but in what i saw he's only a waiter. maybe something happens after that was cut out? or maybe the poster is just a gimmick. i wondering if the same thing happened to liz, or "the piano teacher".

Took that long to hit at least 3 major biopic cliches. Why do I get the feeling there will be little discussion of the music? Any scene where Brown tells the band the emphasize the one-beat to make it funky? Do we get to see the moment Clyde Stubblefield comes up with the "Funky Drummer" beat and the part where Brown takes credit for what turns out to be the most sampled beat of all time? Doubt it. But wouldn't that be an interesting flick?

Took that long to hit at least 3 major biopic cliches. Why do I get the feeling there will be little discussion of the music? Any scene where Brown tells the band the emphasize the one-beat to make it funky? Do we get to see the moment Clyde Stubblefield comes up with the "Funky Drummer" beat and the part where Brown takes credit for what turns out to be the most sampled beat of all time? Doubt it. But wouldn't that be an interesting flick?

Several people told me it was good but I detest biopics on principle, its a total waste of what could have been an otherwise great actual documentary.

i had always rejected this unseen --- because i assumed it was just genocide apologist propaganda, and to an extent it is that... but not quite. amazingly beautifully shot film, great acting, compositions, dialogue-- goes from gut-wrenching to hilarious… john ford was amazing, really, and john wayne was pretty great here in spite of the often nefarious symbolism attached to his image.

i don't know how to explain this movie yet because to me it's not as clear-cut as people want it to be. it could be an acknowledgement of guilt, or it could be a justification for extermination, depending on how you read it. but it's definitely not a rah rah cowboys movie.

still, if you're willing to stomach such uncertainties for the sake of watching a masterpiece (way more entertaining than anything leni riefenstahl ever made), this is a great movie. epic in every sense.

dang, Ritchie Havens still rocks harder than a magic kiss, Joan Baez is still boring as all fuck, ending her set to near silence from a crowd bored to tears, the Who still seem more engaging visually than musically (BORING FUCKING SONGS), Sha Na Na seem a little more like a fun gay camp take on what was oldies at the time than I remember as a kid, Wavy Gravy seems more like a CIA undercover disinformation agent than I remembered, Canned Heat still rock hard, and the hippies still look crusty and like they are having the fucking tgime of their lives.

(The squares who went just to be hip all left once the rain started, because it was just not "comfy" enough. fucking squares)

i had always rejected this unseen --- because i assumed it was just genocide apologist propaganda, and to an extent it is that... but not quite. amazingly beautifully shot film, great acting, compositions, dialogue-- goes from gut-wrenching to hilarious… john ford was amazing, really, and john wayne was pretty great here in spite of the often nefarious symbolism attached to his image.

i don't know how to explain this movie yet because to me it's not as clear-cut as people want it to be. it could be an acknowledgement of guilt, or it could be a justification for extermination, depending on how you read it. but it's definitely not a rah rah cowboys movie.

still, if you're willing to stomach such uncertainties for the sake of watching a masterpiece (way more entertaining than anything leni riefenstahl ever made), this is a great movie. epic in every sense.

I think the propaganda angle is a bit of a red herring. Certainly as propaganda it'd have to be dismissed as an abject failure. Its message, as you argue, is far too elusive, mainly because Wayne's Ethan remain's one of Hollywood's great ambiguous anti-heroes - up there with Bogart's Rick, Welles' Kane, etc. Whatever else we might say about arch propagandists like Riefenstahl, Eisenstein, Griffith, etc, they went out of their way to avoid any of the very ambiguity that's made The Searchers' one of the most analysed and interpreted films ever. Not to say it doesn't have a political position, but no more than any other Western. Its Ethan's psychological and symbolic complexity - not even his racism is straight forward - and Ford's technical virtuosity, and subtlety and sheer intelligence of vision that I'd say contribute far more to its reputation than its political or ideological content.

I think the propaganda angle is a bit of a red herring. Certainly as propaganda it'd have to be dismissed as an abject failure. Its message, as you argue, is far too elusive, mainly because Wayne's Ethan remain's one of Hollywood's great ambiguous anti-heroes - up there with Bogart's Rick, Welles' Kane, etc. Whatever else we might say about arch propagandists like Riefenstahl, Eisenstein, Griffith, etc, they went out of their way to avoid any of the very ambiguity that's made The Searchers' one of the most analysed and interpreted films ever. Not to say it doesn't have a political position, but no more than any other Western. Its Ethan's psychological and symbolic complexity - not even his racism is straight forward - and Ford's technical virtuosity, and subtlety and sheer intelligence of vision that I'd say contribute far more to its reputation than its political or ideological content.

oh i didn't mean that it was a propaganda piece, it's definitely not that, but i can't help to be informed by the ideology of the invader. i mean, ethan aside, all the gringos are good and wonderful people who deserve peace and prosperity. ethan in a way is their guard dog, and yes his flaws are individual but they somehow don't transfer to his fellow conquerors (the army yes but not the homesteaders). yes, he shows the dark side of the enterprise, but the enterprise as a whole remains clean, so to speak, and therefore justified.

this to me works out to something like saying: the warrior is a monster, but protecting our homes requires and justifies such monsters. those monsters are flawed but they serve a good cause. and i sort of agree with that, actually-- internal peace need monsters guarding the borders. but it's just that it's never fully shown how scar, the opposing monster, justifies his own monstrosity and child-kidnapping. he's shown attacking and terrorizing, but never protecting his own people. how come? it's the 50s in america.

meanwhile, we see the atrocities of the cavalry, the massacres and unnecessary killing, but the return home seems to justify everything in the end. doesn't it? it's not like natalie wood ever goes full native.

i get it that the searchers was a step forward in the history of westerns though, and it's a gorgeous movie, really a masterpiece, 10/10, but to me, from my contemporary perspective, the political change looks more like 1/4 step rather than a full one. hey, john ford was a genius, no doubt in my mind, but i can still grimace at the politics of his time event though he moved things forward a little bit.

bertolucci's "novecento". badly translated as "1900" (it's more like "the 20th century" or "the 1900s").

the full 5+ hour cut.

gorgeous.

i mean, there are a lot of problems with the cross-language dubbing--some actors speak english, others italian, others french, so no version sounds perfect because you get funny voices regardless. and the movie itself is far from perfect, but the sheer scope of it, damn, i don't know, it was like reading some epic novel, and immersing yourself into its world.

and dominique sanda-- how gorgeous was she? (her english dubbing was atrocious though)

this was all, generally, fantastic. maybe i have to be outside its influence to get some critical distance but it gave me two incredible afternoons this weekend.